UNEARTHLY TRANCE · V | CD

Jewelcase CD.

Background information about ''

There are albums that crush you, and then there are albums that bury you so deep you come out the other side transformed. Unearthly Trance's fifth full-length, simply titled V, is very much the latter. This is doom metal at its most primal and feral — not the ornate, candle-lit variety, but the kind that stalks through the dark with blood under its fingernails. From the opening churn of "Unveiled," the New York trio make it abundantly clear that they haven't come to negotiate. The riffs are tectonic, the rhythms a slow, deliberate pummeling, and Ryan Lipynsky's vocals sound like they're being dragged up from somewhere genuinely unpleasant.

What makes V so devastatingly effective is the band's refusal to stay in one lane. Tracks like "The Horsemen Arrive In The Night" blast out of the gate with a punkish, blackened urgency that catches you completely off guard — barely three minutes of snarling hostility before "Solar Eye" drags you back into the tar pits with its seven-minute crawl through feedback-drenched despair. The two-part "Adversaries Mask" is a masterstroke, shifting from lumbering dread to a feedback-scorched interlude that feels like the floor dropping out. "The Tesla Effect" and "Sleeping While They Feast" inject an almost Swans-like repetitive hypnotism, while "Submerged Metropolis" builds into one of the most suffocating grooves the band has ever committed to tape. The production is raw but massive — every snare hit sounds like a slab of concrete being dropped, every bass note rattles the ribcage. And then there's the closing trifecta: "Physical Universe Distorts," "Into A Chasm," and the colossal "The Leveling" — a near-half-hour descent that leaves you hollowed out and weirdly grateful. The untitled hidden track at the end is a final, cryptic exhale after the apocalypse.

For fans of:
Eyehategod, Khanate, Thou, Graves At Sea, Indian

Track listing

1. Unveiled
2. The Horsemen Arrive In The Night
3. Solar Eye
4. Adversaries Mask I
5. Adversaries Mask II
6. The Tesla Effect
7. Sleeping While They Feast
8. Submerged Metropolis
9. Current
10. Physical Universe Distorts
11. Into A Chasm
12. The Leveling
13. Untitled

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